In The Wall's Shadow
by NiceIceEdward
Summary: While he & Bella wait in a line among a crowd of human's, one voice calls out Edward's name. The voice is aged, as is its owner, but who is she and how does she know Edward. AU EPOV


_I've found a world_  
_where love and darkness all collide_  
_Maybe this time_  
_We can leave our broken world behind_

_ - Evanescence, Together Again_

**In The Wall's Shadow**

Generally, when I'm doing the mundane things that humans do, I can tune them out. I focus on something and leave them to their incessant mental chatter. So as I stood with Bella in the deli line at a Grocery store, I did my best to focus on the prism of her hair color, leaving everything else to those around us. I could see the beauty and incandescence of her cheek and forehead as I stood beside her, Bella as a vampire was a thoroughly breathtaking sight. I was deeply focused on her, as she waited patiently to buy whatever animal she would serve Charlie for our dinner tonight. He was guaranteed to love it, and I was just as resolutely guaranteed not to eat it.

Charlie wasn't surprised by my habit of saying I wasn't hungry, and Bella happily suffered the later indignities resulting from keeping up appearances for Charlie's sake. She actually ate the things she prepared for him. Renesmee thankfully was able to eat with a fair appearance of enjoying it, even if she did prefer the vampire diet when she was with us. For Charlie, and Jacob, she always ate human food. Renesmee was off with Jacob now, a beach day.

I smiled as I focused on the varied dark colors of Bella's hair. The internal mental chaos of those around me a lulling background to my own amused thoughts. Suddenly though, a woman's voice, roughened with the distinctive harshness of age broke through my thoughts. It's sound, though raspy and discomfiting, was not responsible for getting my attention. What did draw my attention was that the voice said my name, in a way that insinuated she knew me, recognized me. I turned to look at her, and Bella sensed my movement. She turned and looked back at me, and seeing where my eyes were directed, followed my gaze.

"Edward, why is that lady looking at you?"

I was focused on the woman's thoughts now, _Edward, Edward, but how can it be. He looks no different. He's every bit as beautiful as the day we met him. When he saved Ossi from the SS officer. He looks exactly the same. but how can that be, will he know me? I am so old now, he will not know I am his little Lina._

I felt my head turning back and forth, attempting denial. I choked slightly and Bella's face turned quickly to look at me. I felt her hand on my arm, and I put my left hand on it, for strength. I felt strangely weak.

Little Lina, Iderlina. A memory swirled forward at her thoughts. I remembered shelled out buildings, snow falling inside the deserted rooms of buildings which no longer had roofs. Then I remembered hearing the screams. The desperate, terrified squalling of a cornered human. The sound had made me instinctively go on the defense. The screams I heard were too highly pitched to be adults, there were children. I heard also the sounds of deeper voices, male voices.

I recalled the sound of the plaster shuddering and shattering as I tore through the wall to reach them. Then the faces. Six pairs of round eyes, four blue, two brown, all looking at me like the apparition I was. As my mind brought back the memory of the things I heard in the minds of the four men, which had been the catalyst for my sudden entrance, I felt myself begin to shy away from the memory.

She shuffled slowly toward me. Her steps the movement of age and infirmity. For a moment her thoughts seemed to be as stunned to silence as her voice was. She saw me shaking my head, and began nodding her own in response. _Yes, yes, Edward, you see it, don't you. You know me, oh this world of such strangeness. It is me, Lina. The girl now grown. _

When she reached me, I could hold it in no longer, I was too shocked to give in to pretense, "That is impossible, you were taken, I looked. You were gone."

She answered, "It is possible, I am Iderlina, your little Lina. The only thing impossible is that I am ancient, and you look exactly the same."

She looked at me, searching my face, her own, an image of shock and something else...pleasure? Then she asked me the one question I didn't want to answer.

"Edward, where is Ossi?"

Ossi Lebel. I hadn't seen Ossi in over 60 years. In truth, I'd done my best not to think of him. It was an old wound. It was the only sort of wound no venom can heal.

It was the end of winter, about a year before the end of the Holocaust, that wretched evening when I stumbled across Lina and her young brother Ossi being tormented by German SS officers. They were discovered hiding in the ruins of their former ghetto. The officers had vile, rancid ideas of what they were going to do to these poor starving children, and their thoughts incited me to great violence. As all such hideous ugliness of intention does with me.

I was wandering war torn Europe during that time. Randomly feeding on SS officers and hiding their naked bodies in the streets. There was so much death, no one would care how the men had died, they'd simply be disposed of along with the rest. It was an ideal feeding ground for a vampire who had joined the American military to make up for his own cowardice during the last war. Part of me felt I was justifying myself, part of me felt that being immortal gave me an advantage that canceled justification. As though my immortality made me unable to make up for my cowardice. It's easy to be brave when you're difficult to harm.

At the time I came upon the two Lebel children, I had grown dissatisfied with my plan to indiscriminately kill the enemy, beginning to feel that in my haste to see them as the the monster, I was ignoring the monster within myself. Killing them for being German, made me no better than them and their killing millions, simply for being Jewish. What made me so different? It was thoughts of this, and my dark and hellish berating of myself that sent me into the district. The skeletal buildings suited my own lack of humanity. They no longer had flesh, and I felt I no longer did either.

I irrevocably destroyed the Officers. There was nothing left of them but an embarrassing pool when I finished with them. I hid it from the childrens' eyes, but they'd seen so much ugliness I think the sound alone was enough to haunt them.

My first thought was to get them away, and I argued with them, but they wouldn't leave. They held hope that their family, or some portion of it, might one day return and they wouldn't flee the district.

I was furious, and darkly terrified Lina several times, but to her credit she never budged. I think they both recognized I was different, but had been through enough that they just accepted anything.

After storming around in anger, then later hours of long thought, I decided the best thing I could do would be to protect at least these two. There were millions, too many thousands to count, that I could do nothing about. Though a vampire, I was not as indestructible as I'd have liked, and storming a camp to free Jews could have led to a quick end for me. At least I could care for these two, and perhaps they would redeem some of my less moral moments. In my mind, it balanced, and that ended up being a sufficient enough justification for me.

And so the hiding of the two Lebel children began for me. I kept them in the higher floors of the ruins carrying them across the rooftops when necessary, or shoving them through the shadowed and broken paths between destroyed buildings at other times. I kept them perfectly hidden for 6 months, leaving them for short periods only to find them food. Ossi and Lina Lebel ate much better than any of their Jewish Brethren, because I stole directly from the SS officers themselves. They always had the best of food.

I remember Lina cried the first time I brought stew for them. I had taken the entire pot off the stove, and the bread lying on the cutting board, as a middle aged German woman cooked for an SS officer. They ate it with their hands, and I couldn't find it in myself to find their way of eating barbaric.

During those months of hiding, I obtained things for them, coats, clothes...shoes, socks. They lived fairly well for homeless war orphans. I dreaded illness, not knowing much about how I could save them. I often thought that when the war was over, I would dedicate myself to studying general medicine and emergency aid, so that I would never again be at a loss as to how to help in the event it was necessary.

We were nearly found many times, but I always took care of the officers who found us. No one would harm these two whom I had taken under my wing. I protected them ferociously and without mercy.

I managed to keep them protected and healthy until the middle of that spring. I'd taken to hiding them in apartments near the western ghetto walls. I left to get them food, and while I was gone, a small contingent off SS stormed the apartment I'd put them in. Terrified they fled the building, and were caught up in the exodus into the streets. I heard the screams and the gunfire and flew back to find them gone.

I ran out into the street with the humans. I ran past all the fleeing jews who had been hiding in the apartments and saw Lina and Ossi ahead. Ossi was on one side of the street, and Lina on the other. Ossi was younger, and about to be shot by an officer, so I ran to him first. I called out to Lina, who turned to look at me at the exact moment that an officer grabbed her around the waist. She screamed my name, struggling with the officer. I heard him speaking to her, he said, "Your clothes are very nice, ja? You have been stealing from German's, haven't you"

A German truck passed between us as Lina screamed and scratched at the officers hands in a vain attempt to make him release her. I started to run, but the truck lurched away and nearly struck me. I ran around the back of it, Ossi gripped tightly in my arms, but she was gone. Just gone.

I was brought back from my memories by Bella's voice, "Edward, what is this all about?"

I looked away from Iderlina's brown eyes, and into Bella's golden ones. "Bella, I told you I didn't fight in the first World War, which is true, but I was in Europe for the second World War. Specifically in Poland. I cared for two children there who I found in my travels, their names were Iderlina, then thirteen and Ossi, who was seven, Lebel, this lady is Iderlina. Lina, this is my wife, Bella."

They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, but Bella still wanted to know the story behind my knowledge of this woman. So we stepped to an area with seats by the deli for eating, and I told her the story of my time in the ravaged streets of Nazi occupied Poland.

Lina kept silent until I reached the point where she disappeared.

Then she said; "I was taken to their headquarters, and was taken into a German household to do labor for them. I surprised them with my health, and they decided to use me for work. I was 13 and perfectly capable of working as any adult. I feared for my life, but I knew Ossi was with you, so I did what I had to, hoping I'd see you again one day. Here I have, and I must ask you again, Edward, what has happened to my Ossi?"

Her eyes held such hope, I hated to see that light dim. I began talking.

"Ossi was terrified, and yelled at me. He cried and called out for you. I had to find somewhere to hide him so I could search for you, but I couldn't keep him quiet. In all this time, the only thing which had kept Ossi strong, and able to live each day was having you. The one link to the reasonable world in the insanity which his life had become.

"When he lost you, he lost his young will to live. He stopped accepting the food I brought him. When he slept I left to find you. I searched every ghetto and neighborhood in the entire city. You were just gone. I searched for several weeks. One night after searching for you, I came back to find that a strong and virulent fever had set into the boy. He burned all over his young body, and his poor tiny and tragic frame was wracked with the heaves of fruitless sickness. He lost what little fluid his body would take, and wouldn't accept any replenishment. Usually when a human begins to die, the instinct to survive kicks in and they will fight. Ossi did not. He simply folded into himself, and in misery sought out the sleep from which he would never awake. A week after I first found him burning, he went cold. After cursing God for the things he had done without explanation, I buried Ossi in a park and laid a stone over his tiny form. It was quite large and unlikely to be moved soon.

"I haunted the streets until peace was declared, and I searched for you even then, but I never found you, Lina. I returned back home, to my family," I turned to Bella, "to Carlisle and Esme."

"I vowed that caring for humans was useless, and that I would never do it again. I was close to no one except my family, until I met Bella." I looked back at Iderlina. I raised my hand and touched her forehead as I'd done when she was young, "I failed you both my little Lina, I haven't words enough to apologize for Ossi. It is good to know you lived though. I'm happy to see you, Lina, you look well."

She smiled at me and leaned forward a little, "It wasn't your fault Edward. I am to blame for Ossi. you protected us so well, for so long. I lost him, and when I did, I left him lost. You only tried to save him again."

She sat back and began opening her pocket book, she reached in and took out a photo. She spoke again, "I married, a gentle man named Domonik Gorski, some years after the war. He was very good to me. Here is our children, the eldest there," she pointed at a long lean youth with dark eyes like Ossi's had been, "Is Edward Ossi Gorski."

I felt my head jerk up inhumanly fast to look into her face. She blinked in surprise, and then her expression softened and she smiled. "Yes, Edward, I named him for you." I opened my mouth to respond but she didn't give me time, "Can you, I wonder, would you be able to tell me where the park in Poland is? I wish to say a proper goodbye to my brother?"

I smiled, she'd just given me a way to help her, one last time. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my Father. After a moment, grinning victoriously, I answered her, "I will do more than tell you, I will show you. Come, my Father is making the arrangements. You have a passport?"

A slight defensiveness flashed in her eyes for only a moment, then she smiled ruefully.."I always have my papers, Edward. Something I took away from that time."

I heard the duality in her tone, accompanied with the contradictory thoughts in her head, so I simply replied, "I understand."

After taking Bella's hand, I put my arm out for Lina. The least I could do would be to reunite the two Lebel's finally, after all this long, incredible time.


End file.
